[Taxacom] GENERAL CALL TO BATTLE

Fri Feb 12 07:54:55 CST 2021

Hi Mike,
I do not see that "can we move to a more efficient model of getting
understudied taxa described in a revolutionary way" and "should we modify
time-tested methods of the last 250 years to achieve the same goal
instead?" are opposite. To me they look complementary and desirable. May
you want to bring in your views and expertise, please let me know.
What inflammatory rhetoric is: Claiming that 15 species are new when they
have not been diagnosed from 51 previous species.

For those of you who missed it:
I did not start this war aimed at overriding the Code and overwriting our
animal names. Those were Paul Herbert, Daniel Janzen, and Michael Sharkey,
long ago. Again, I did not start this war, but I do plan to finish it.
Therefore the call to battle. If the wording of my call worries any of you
more than what will happen if we fail to stop the ongoing nomenclatural
vandalism, then you are missing how dangerous the situation is. Of course,
there will be many who are at the end of their careers, who won't care
about integrative taxonomy having a chance, and who won't care about
present and future integrative taxonomists having to mop the large-scale
synonymy disaster left behind by molecular vandals. If you are fine with
having millions of new molecular synonyms, then you are part of the problem.

Kind regards,
Carlos

Carlos A. Martínez Muñoz
Zoological Museum, Biodiversity Unit
FI-20014 University of Turku
Finland
Myriatrix <http://myriatrix.myspecies.info/>
ResearchGate profile
<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Martinez-Munoz>
Myriapod Morphology and Evolution
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/205802113162102/>

El jue, 11 feb 2021 a las 11:13, Stephen Thorpe (<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>)
escribió:

>
> Carlos,
> Just to clarify, I think we agree that barcodes alone should never be used
> to define new (or non-new) taxa. However, I do see a valid place for
> minimalist morphological descriptions. For many beetle taxa, for example,
> an illustration (photo or drawing) of the male genitalia is quite
> sufficient to identify the species. Nobody ever reads the full description
> of the whole organism. It isn't the end of the world if someone eventually
> finds that two distinct species have identical genitalia. You just attach
> the name to one of those species and describe the other as new. Where's the
> problem?
> Cheers,
> Stephen
> On Thursday, 11 February 2021, 03:23:25 pm NZDT, Carlos Alberto Martínez
> Muñoz via Taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Dear John,
> Thank you for your valuable opinion. Part of the problem here is that the
> proposed names are being considered valid under the ZooCode. I have no
> problem with molecular species getting binomial names, just NOT under the
> ZooCode when they fail to be diagnosed from previous species. Molecular
> geneticists are most welcome to use binomial names, but those shall not be
> considered Code-compliant. The honor of proposing the final name shall be
> for those who actually connect the sequences to the existing corpus of 250+
> years of morphological knowledge, something that Meierotto et al. (2019)
> did not achieve. For example, they just differentiated their 15 new
> molecular Zelomorpha species from one out of 52 previous morphological
> species. Therefore, claims of priority such as "Zelomorpha angelsolisi
> Meierotto, sp. nov." would have not been considered publishable by someone
> applying kindergarten-level logic. This failed to happen and they were
> published. Despite the previous outcry and even a reply paper, this
> community and the Commission failed to stop them. Therefore, the only thing
> left is to stand together and fight back on our own. The Commission
> promised decades ago that the ZooCode would not fall as long as we defended
> it. We still defend it!
> Kind regards,
> Carlos
>
> Carlos A. Martínez Muñoz
> Zoological Museum, Biodiversity Unit
> FI-20014 University of Turku
> Finland
> Myriatrix <http://myriatrix.myspecies.info/>
> ResearchGate profile
> <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Martinez-Munoz>
> Myriapod Morphology and Evolution
> <https://www.facebook.com/groups/205802113162102/>
>
>
>
>
> El mié, 10 feb 2021 a las 19:28, John Grehan (<calabar.john at gmail.com>)
> escribió:
>
>
> > My understanding that the code is just an informal agreement, not an
> > imposed law. Taxonomists are at liberty to follow it or not. Same for
> > journals. At least some journals require code conformity, but others
> > apparently do not. I have no problem in principle with the idea of
> > published objections being made to procedures used in the papers cited,
> but
> > there is no threat of 'overthrow' of the code in the sense of imposing an
> > alternative set of conditions. If some want to publish that bypass some
> > (all?) of the current code then there is nothing to stop that unless
> > journals object. At least that is my impression.
> >
> > John Grehan
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 12:06 PM Carlos Alberto Martínez Muñoz via
> Taxacom
> > <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:
> >
> >>  ***GENERAL CALL TO BATTLE***
> >> Calling all Zoological Taxonomists to Battle!
> >> Dear friends and colleagues,
> >> We are going to need as much help as possible to fight the attempts of
> >> Michael Sharkey, Daniel Janzen, Paul Herbert, and others to override the
> >> ZooCode and to overwrite 250+ years of Zoological Taxonomy.
> >> If you are willing to contribute your arguments and expertise to a
> >> response
> >> paper, please contact me.
> >> Those of you who might not be aware of this serious issue, please check:
> >> 1) Meierotto et al. (2019): A revolutionary protocol to describe
> >> understudied hyperdiverse taxa and overcome the taxonomic impediment.
> >> Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift, 66 (2): 119-145.
> >> https://doi.org/10.3897/dez.66.34683
> >> 2) Sharkey et al. (2021): Minimalist revision and description of 403 new
> >> species in 11 subfamilies of Costa Rican braconid parasitoid wasps,
> >> including host records for 219 species. ZooKeys, 1013: 1-665.
> >> https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1013.55600
> >> See also a reply to Meierotto et al. (2019):
> >> 3) Zamani et al. (2021): The omission of critical data in the pursuit of
> >> ‘revolutionary’ methods to accelerate the description of species.
> >> Systematic Entomology, 46: 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1111/syen.12444
> >> We need as much help as possible! Please, share widely and invite others
> >> to
> >> contribute! Let this be the hour when we draw swords together!
> >>
> >> Carlos A. Martínez Muñoz
> >> Zoological Museum, Biodiversity Unit
> >> FI-20014 University of Turku
> >> Finland
> >> Myriatrix <http://myriatrix.myspecies.info/>
> >> ResearchGate profile
> >> <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Martinez-Munoz>
> >> Myriapod Morphology and Evolution
> >> <https://www.facebook.com/groups/205802113162102/>
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> >> Nurturing nuance while assaulting ambiguity for about 34 years,
> 1987-2021.
> >>
> >
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> Nurturing nuance while assaulting ambiguity for about 34 years, 1987-2021.
>